Making Sense of "Red Birth Marks".

What a useful tool the vascular anomalies classification described by Wassef et al would have been during my medical training! As a pediatric resident in the 1980s, I was frequently perplexed by the many red “birth marks” I was confronted with while performing newborn and well-child examinations. Despite a reassuring nod from attendings, who offered terms like “port wine stain” and “strawberry hemangioma,” such gastronomic allusions did little to make sense of the nature of those unpredictable red vascular lesions. Most were red, flat “Angel’s kisses”, and faded with time, whereas a smaller percentage remained flat but darkened with age. Some presented as innocuous red spots in the first month or 2 of life, then mushroomed in color and size during early infancy. When queried by a concerned parent, I often felt unable to provide a clear diagnosis or prognosis.